Gary Milliman, recipient of ICMA's Award for Career Excellence

If there was a hall of shame for local government administrators, there’d be a long waiting list.  Robert Rizzo would be first in line for his shameless fleecing of the City of Bell, California.  Unfortunately, he’s not alone among self-serving opportunists and even thieves who’ve exploited their positions of trust.  It would be a tragedy, however, if this tiny minority of scoundrels became the public face of public service.  The media naturally focus on flagrant outliers — exposing crooked businessmen, predatory priests, shady attorneys and negligent doctors.  They exist, but they don’t represent the vast majority.

Fortunately, the International City/County Managers Association is recognizing a quiet hero who represents what’s best about public service — a city manager who was as unselfish in his service to the City of Southgate, California as Rizzo was selfish in his exploitation of nearby Bell.

Gary teaching good government to tomorrow's leaders

Before Bell, a thuggish young politician named Albert Robles went to jail for masterminding the looting of millions from neighboring Southgate.  Robles was even more brazen that Rizzo.  Exposure of his shady dealing, bribery and election fraud finally led to  his downfall when the Council majority he controlled was ousted in a recall.  As the clock ticked down for their removal from office, Robles spent literally the last hours standing over Southgate’s City Manager and Finance Director insisting they write huge checks to his cronies — leaving the city nearly bankrupt when the new majority took office the next day.

The California League of Cities mounted an emergency volunteer effort to assist the incoming reform-minded Council majority restore honest professional management.  Gary Milliman, who’d already forged a long and successful city management career, was working as the League’s regional representative.  He threw himself into organizing a crew of dedicated staff on loan from their cities to sort out the tangled books and rescue Southgate from imminent insolvency.

He was, on the surface, an incongruous choice for a community of predominantly Latino immigrants.  A bald, middle-aged white man who wore cowboy boots and a large rodeo belt buckle, his command of Spanish was limited to skills Californians use to order at Mexican restaurants.  What the City Councilmembers embraced, however, was his rock solid integrity and tireless work ethic.  Before long they were insisting he fill the void as their City Manager.

Under Gary's leadership, Southgate successfully "clawed back" millions of looted public funds

He reluctantly accepted his third tenure as a City Manager — this time for a city teetering on the brink of bouncing payroll checks.  Working with a demoralized staff, he gradually restored financial stability, professional standards and technical competency.  He attracted smart and able advisors and informal contributors that brought remarkably sophisticated assistance to a community in dire need.  He worked harmoniously with the City Council and put in uncounted hours of dedicated service.

It was exhausting and undoubtedly draining.  No one begrudged his decision after four years to move north to be the City Manager of the small town of Brookings, Oregon — even if Southgate was sad to let him go.  He’s continued to perform exemplary service there in his trademark low-key, collaborative style.  It was there that his colleagues from nearby towns, local elected officials and even Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber joined in nominating him for the most prestigious award given by his professional colleagues around the world.

These are trying times for anyone in public service.  The handful of egregious abusers that have exploited vulnerabilities in local checks and balances have deeply damaged the trust built up by thousands of other dedicated public servants.  Scott Mitnick, City Manager of nearby Thousand Oaks, recently reflected on the challenge of restoring that trust in a thoughtful essay in the Ventura County Star.  “All of us need to work together to restore California’s long-standing reputation of having the most professional and best-run cities in America,” Mitnick wrote.

Mitnick is right on target.  Fortunately there are leaders like Gary Milliman who demonstrate the opportunity for even the most disadvantaged cities in California to have the benefit of the best in the city manager profession.  Those are the cities that need it most.  At a time when the reputation of public service is haunted by the specter of Robert Rizzo, the example of Gary Milliman provides a shining ideal for others to emulate.

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Assembly Member Bob Wieckowski (left) congratulates fellow member Warren Furutani after passing the Pension bill (Assemblymember Das Williams is in the foreground). Photo: Susana Bates, Special To The Chronicle

Yesterday’s Ventura County Star carried a skeptical Associated Press account of the bipartisan pension reform adopted overwhelmingly by the Legislature late last week.  It makes the case that “while (Governor Jerry) Brown and Democratic leaders hailed the deal as sweeping and substantial, the governor failed to get critical elements that he previously said were needed to better protect taxpayers for years to come.”

With just three days left in the Legislative session, Governor Brown announced a compromise reached with fellow Democrats in the Legislature.

So the compromise measure does ratchet up the contributions made by existing employees to fund future benefits.  It does so over the next five years.  While local government agencies will have to actually negotiate with employee unions to achieve these savings, the law gives them added legal leverage — besides the overwhelming fiscal realities.

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I’ve spent nearly 30 years in public service in local government,  the last fifteen as a City Manager.  Since 2004, I’ve had the privilege of being City Manager of Ventura.  It’s here I will stay, although no longer as City Manager after September 15.

In a statement released today, our City Council announced: “During City Manager Rick Cole’s annual evaluation, it became clear that a majority of the City Council believes that it is time for a change in leadership. In response to the Council’s evaluation and respecting the Council’s responsibility, Mr. Cole offered to resign and retire subject to a mutually agreeable application of the severance provisions of his existing employment agreement and certain other terms.  Mayor Tracy said, ‘The Council recognizes Mr. Cole’s vision and dedication during his time as our City Manager and the many accomplishments during the past eight and a half years, notably the adoption and implementation of our General Plan and making the hard choices that have ensured Ventura has lived within our means during tough economic times.  We appreciate his service to our community and wish him well in his future endeavors.’”

Mayor Mike Tracy and I agree on many things, but two stand out in this situation.  First, what’s good for Ventura comes first.  Second, better to tell the truth, even if it is uncomfortable.  I’m not leaving to spend more time with my family — although I’m looking forward to that.  I’m not leaving to “pursue other opportunities,” although I’m excited about that too.  I’m resigning because after eight and half years, the majority of the Council believe it is time for a change in leadership.

Public service truly is a privilege.  In difficult times, leadership is difficult.  I’m painfully aware of my own shortcomings, missteps, mistakes and missed opportunities.  We all have them.  Now it’s my responsibility to hand off the baton to new leadership.  That’s happened many times in the 146 years we’ve been a city and the 78 years since voters instituted the City Council/City Manager form of government in our charter.

Like all the members of the City Council, I love and cherish this community.  It is a great place to raise my family.  Having weathered the worst of the economic storm, I believe Ventura’s best years are ahead of us.   I look forward to contributing as a citizen to Ventura’s future successes.

I want to thank the Council and countless citizens I’ve had the chance to work with as we’ve collaborated on Ventura’s ambitious vision to be a model community in so many ways.  You’ve inspired me and I hope I’ve served you well.  Above all, I want to convey my profound gratitude to the City staff who continue to do great work, embracing and pioneering innovative approaches to public service.

For me, I aspire to live up to the words of Paul in his letter to Timothy: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.”

Blessings to you and the City of San Buenaventura.

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State Senate President Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John Perez

UPDATE: Governor Jerry Brown has held a press conference and issued a press release that is reviewed by the Sacto Bee here. But the actual bill has not yet been released — and will be voted on by Friday.

The Democratic leaders in the State legislature have announced they will finally introduce bills for comprehensive pension reform today.  That’s more than 10 months since Governor Jerry Brown proposed his 12 point reform package.  The June deadline to put legislation before voters this November was utterly ignored.  Then on July 3rd, the Governor’s spokesperson Gil Duran told the press that Governor Brown and legislative leaders still hadn’t come to agreement and would need to negotiate over the July legislative break.  “These complex issues cannot be resolved in two days, and he has asked the Legislature to continue to work with him over the recess to resolve the substantial differences,” Duran said.

Apparently these complex issues can be resolved in three days, because that’s all that’s left of the legislative session.

What’s at stake? Billions of dollars, the retirement security of millions of State and local public servants, the long-term solvency of State and local government and the credibility of the Governor and Legislature to enact their promise of comprehensive pension reform.  How long will “legislators,” the public, the press and interested parties have to read, analyze and debate the proposals?

Three days.

It’s shameful.

Like most State legislators, we’ll all have to wait and see what’s been agreed to behind closed doors . . .

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Saving the life of a would-be suicide

It’s 2012, but when most people think about the Fire Department, the pictures that come to mind are still red trucks and burning buildings. Maybe not Dalmatian puppies at the firehouse anymore, but the popular image is pretty dated.

Especially the burning building part.  There’s an average of one fire a day in Ventura.  While many are potentially catastrophic, most are either minor or quickly controlled with swift response.

In 2010, just 383 of the 11,497 calls for service were for fires.  No, that’s not a typo.  We still call it the “Fire” Department — and in an older city next to hillside wildlands we truly face major fire threats — but only 3.3% of the calls that come in involve actual fires.  Nor are our crews spending a significant amount of time getting cats out of trees.  No, the vast majority of calls (74.1% in fact) are for medical emergencies or medical rescues.

This has been a particularly busy period for our emergency responders (or “firefighters” as we still call them):  extracting two passengers trapped in a crushed auto; fishing a man out of the water who attempted suicide by jumping off the pier; transporting a 300-pound patient with a fractured leg down three flights of stairs to an ambulance and, by the way, fighting a rash of arson fires in the Ventura river bottom.

Single car high speed accident at North Bank and Montgomery

As busy as they’ve been, there is an even bigger challenge hanging over the Ventura Fire Department: what happens at the end of the three-year Federal grant that’s providing $2.34 million (along with $1.2 million in local match) for 24-hour staffing at Station Four in east Ventura? 

The Fire Department is gearing up to answer that question and provide recommendations to the City Council early next year, giving everyone plenty of time to solve this challenge before the funding is exhausted.  But it won’t be easy and will require everyone to look outside their comfort zone.Of course the less you know, the easier it is to solve the problem. ‘Let’s organize volunteers like they do in Santa Paula’ is one suggestion. That’s doable, assuming there is broad community support for switching from our professional firefighter/paramedics who are cross trained to provide immediate advanced life support in many hazardous environments. That’s not clear from recent election results. ‘Let’s have the private ambulance company AMR respond to medical emergencies instead of dispatching a big fire truck’ is another seemingly sensible idea. The reality is our Firefighter/paramedics at our six stations are often the first responders and can immediately begin advanced life support care. The private ambulance paramedics are responsible for transporting patients to the hospital. Critical calls require firefighter/paramedics to assist during transport. Firefighter/paramedics can be available for additional emergencies once a patient is loaded and transported to the hospital on less critical incidents. ‘Transition to an 8-hour shift so we aren’t paying firefighters to sleep overnight at the station’ sounds appealing as well. But under Federal law, we actually only pay our firefighters for 40 hours of work out of their 56-hour-a-week schedule. Either we make do with less staffing on duty or have to pay more for the current 24-hour coverage. And while it’s true that there are fewer calls for service in the middle of the night, you never know when or where major or multiple emergencies will occur — which is a little like not paying for your car insurance at night because you don’t drive as much then.

If it was up to the Fire Department, they’d tell you that they run as efficiently as it is possible to do under the circumstances they face.  They aren’t just saying that — they have the data to back that up, including a recent independent analysis done by Public Safety efficiency expert Byron Pipkin who delivered a report to City Council last year saying that current staffing is already at or below the minimum needed to ensure minimum 24-hour coverage.  Not only has our Fire Department pursued innovative ways to stretch existing resources (including operating with one less Fire Station for 18 months), but it has been a pioneer in inter-agency “mutual aid” cooperation that maximizes efficiencies across city borders.

In the “new normal,” however, the status quo is unsustainable.  While Ventura’s budget is balanced, we face converging long-range threats that can’t be ignored.  Pension costs are going to rise faster than city revenues. Deferred investment in repairing our streets and vital public facilities can’t be put off indefinitely.  And while nearly everyone agrees we should reduce government costs, in a diverse city like ours, there is no consensus about where those additional cuts should fall.

Firefighters transport patient to a waiting ambulance down three flights of narrow stairs

Just the ongoing expense of maintaining six stations requires an additional $1.2 million annually (currently coming from Federal stimulus funds and one-time City revenues.)  So it is time to “think outside the box.”

These challenges don’t mean the problem is insoluble — only that it isn’t as easy as some people think.  It will take the best thinking of both our public safety professionals and informed community participants.  That’s the path charted by our City Council — to analyze the challenge, come up with alternative recommendations and test them against community expectations and ability to pay for those choices.

A citizen committee will be put together to assist in the effort.  In part that’s due to the complexity of the issue — it’s not one that can be sorted out in a three-hour town hall gathering.  In part that’s due to the need to have a cross-section of the community participate — which is not easy to achieve from a public hearing that might tend to draw the vocal and those with a particular agenda.  But there will also be plenty of opportunity to solicit wider input as has been done on a variety of major issues in recent years.  The goal is to hammer out a “Year Four Plan” that provides a sustainable and cost-effective plan for emergency response when the Federal funds (and our local match) runs out.

It would be comforting to go back to red trucks and Dalmatians.  But in 2012, we must look past the “new normal” of inadequate local funding.  We need to forge the “next normal” of sustainable funding, staffing and a forward-looking operations model to ensure a safe Ventura.

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Among the many distinctions that set Ventura apart is this undervalued one: we are the largest jurisdiction in Southern California that doesn’t import any water.  None.  At a time when the State government has just announced a plan to spend $23 billion on a massive pipeline “fix” to the intractable Sacramento River delta which supplies water to both the Central Valley and much of Southern California, our self-sufficiency is a remarkable fact.

Obviously it is not because we are on the coast — desalination remains too costly an option and considering the huge energy costs, may remain so indefinitely.  No, Ventura is bracketed by two rivers and since the Mission fathers built their first aqueduct more than two centuries ago, we’ve managed to live within our means when it comes to relying on local water.

That remains true today, in large part due to the thriftiness of residential and business users.  As a community, we’ve never exceeded the peak demand set back in the mid-Seventies, despite a more than 30% increase in population.  Conservation, spurred by rates that penalize high use, has kept demand within the ability of Ventura Water to meet it.

We simply can’t take that for granted.  It’s said that while two-thirds of the world is covered in water, less than 2% of it is drinkable.  Clean freshwater is not just a precious resource, it is a fragile one.  Many experts predict a global water crunch that will rival our energy challenges.  Locally, we too face an increasing squeeze on our existing water supply.

To hold their own in the face of global competition for citrus, local farmers are shifting from oranges and lemons to crops that take more water like berries and tomatoes.  Understandable choice for the individual farmer, but the cumulative impact is straining underground aquifers.  Federal and State environmental regulations are forcing hard and expensive choices to protect endangered fish and control pollution now literally measured down to “parts per million” for impurities.  And while our community continues to maintain an exemplary record of conserving water, short of big changes in landscaping, it is hard to see how we’d absorb a big drop in supply triggered by some future water contamination problem, lawsuit or regulatory ruling. 

This is hardly a new issue.  Ventura was immersed in a big water controversy twenty years ago that actually ended up at the ballot box with voters choosing between importing state water or shifting to desalination.  Our record of conservation (and relatively modest new growth over the past two decades) has kept that choice at bay.   No one can say what the next twenty years will hold.

What we do know is that water will get more expensive, here and elsewhere.  This is not just a case of supply and demand.  Ironically, the less we use, the more it costs.  This always (understandably) bugs residents who feel like they are getting hosed.  But the pipes, pumps and treatment facilities of a water system cost what they cost almost no matter how much water is actually being pumped through the system.  While Ventura Water bases its bills mostly on the amount of water used by customers, 75% of the cost goes to the construction and maintenance of the massive water infrastructure we’ve built over decades and need to constantly repair and replace.

So, do we have enough water?  The answer is, “Yes, but . . . “  Yes, but we can’t take it for granted.  Yes, but it will get more costly.  Yes, but we need to find imaginative new avenues for conservation.  Yes, but we must face some very serious economic and political choices in our region about how we use water.  Yes, but we better be prepared if things change.

The good news is we aren’t relying on a $23 billion dollar big fix to ensure Ventura’s future.  The challenges we face locally are significant, but they are manageable.  We just can’t assume that we will have plenty of (relatively) cheap water indefinitely.  Not in a dry climate in a warming world.  We can be proud that we don’t import water from anywhere else.  Keeping that distinction will be a challenge we can’t duck.

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Columnist Dan Walters

Can California be fixed?  Is our State government so wretchedly dysfunctional that nothing short of “radical surgery” can save it?  Do we need a “top- to-bottom overhaul that connects political decision-making to (California’s) unique social and economic reality and creates cause-and-effect accountability for those we elect to office”? Are we saddled with “an archaic structure (that) does not and cannot reconcile the conflicting demands of a very large and very complex society”?

The one calling for sweeping away the current structure of California government isn’t some Ivory Tower intellectual, a Tea Party blogger or an Occupy Oakland activist.  He’s the most visible and influential observer of California politics.  In a time when new media have diminished the mystique of newspaper columnists, Dan Walters’ Sacramento Bee column runs in more than 50 major papers statewide.  His speeches and television soundbites amplify the power of his opinions.

After more than 35 years in the business, probably no one but Governor Brown knows more about the real world of California government.  But that vantage point seems to render him increasingly grumpy, nostalgic and cynical.  In part that’s generational — old timers usually prefer “the good old days.”  Walters is hardly alone among middle-aged white males lamenting the fading of the California Dream.  The Sixties in California were in some ways a kind of “golden age,” particularly for the Anglo middle class.  California surpassed New York to become America’s most populous state.  Our movies, music and aerospace industry set the pace for much of the “Free World.”  A Democratic Governor named Pat Brown  accomplished bold makeovers in water, education and transportation.  A Republican Governor named Ronald Reagan emerged as the preeminent modern conservative on his way to dominate the national and global stage as President.  Even our State Legislature was ranked by academics as the best in the nation.

Now, despite California’s continuing leadership in high tech and entertainment, no one cites California as a model of good governance.  Instead, Dan Walters regularly flogs today’s politicians as craven tools of special interests who are “disconnected from reality.”  Walters almost always describes California politics as “dysfunctional” and warns of looming catastrophes that he almost always thinks are being “ignored.”

None of this diminishes his still excellent nose for news or his prolific output of commentary.  But it does color his increasingly predictable opinions.  Which brings us to his latest broadside.  Walters essentially dismisses Proposition 31, the “reform” package pushed not by a partisan faction or special interest group but California Forward (which Walters calls “a centrist amalgam of civic, political and cultural elites.”)

Walters gives short shrift to their sensible and overdue changes in how our state manages its finances.  He argues they will simply be circumvented by future Governors and Legislatures. All for naught, he argues, absent the drastic remaking of the entire structure he advocates

Hiram Johnson, California's father of the recall, referendum and initiative

I sympathize with his complaints.  But I question his solution.  Is California’s government any more “archaic” than the one set up back  in 1787  for the struggling United States?  That too has lots of problems, but I don’t hear many voices calling for its total overhaul.  There are a long line of critics who’ve dismissed incremental reforms like those in Proposition 31 because they aren’t “radical” enough.  But I wonder: who in California has the wisdom and ability to propose and enact the needed radical overhaul?  Elected delegates to a State Constitutional Convention?  A political figure who gets elected Governor to push through dramatic changes in our State Constitution like Hiram Johnson did 100 years ago?  A cranky newspaper columnist who will lay out the plan in several 600 word commentaries?

In his column on the futility of Proposition 31, Walters lays out his argument and his mantra: “California’s budget process is dysfunctional because its politics are dysfunctional. They are dysfunctional because an archaic structure does not and cannot reconcile the conflicting demands of a very large and very complex society.”  Let’s reverse that proposition.  Start with our “very large and very complex society.”  How exactly do we all agree on a new modern structure that will reconcile our conflicting demands?  And then how will we get it implemented despite a dysfunctional political environment?

I’m not a syndicated newspaper columnist.  Instead, as a City Manager, I hope to share my perspective on the very practical challenges of improving local government in my own city of Ventura, sometimes in the context of larger statewide challenges.  It’s not my role to analyze the pros and cons of Proposition 31 or to offer a prescription for overhauling State government.  Still, I worry about a very sound principle articulated memorably by UCLA’s great coach John Wooden: “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”  We can all agree that California needs fixing.  Let’s not postpone overdue fiscal reforms until we can all agree on a sweeping overhaul of State government.  Starting over again from scratch worked back in Philadelphia in 1787. What are the chances that such an effort would succeed in Sacramento? Or that it is likely to happen anytime soon?

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Assemblyman Warren Furitani and Senator Gloria Negrete McLeod chair the State Legislature's conference committee on pension reform

Earlier this month, the Ventura City Council unanimously endorsed a call for the California State Legislature to enact “meaningful pension reform now.”  It was immediately endorsed by an editorial in the Ventura County Star which called on “city councils in other cities in Ventura County to take the same action.”

It’s hard to ignore the drumbeat.  As the Star editorial noted, “without waiting for state action, voters in San Diego and San Jose — the state’s second- and third-largest cities — passed measures in June to overhaul their pension programs.” In the last month, three California cities have voted to file bankruptcy and more are teetering.  While long-term pension liabilities are not the cause of these municipal insolvencies, the desperate fiscal plight of more and more local governments adds urgency to calls for long-term pension reform. And as the big statewide pension plans report their dismal earnings records in the slowing global economy, the numbers only get worse.

Yet Legislators continue to stall.  To be fair, a Conference Committee of Assembly and Senate members apparently did hammer out a proposal, although they refused to make it public.  Instead it went to Governor Jerry Brown who insisted it fell short of meaningful reform.  “The governor could not agree to some of the changes in the pension counter-proposal shared by the Legislature on Sunday,” his spokesman, Gil Duran, was quoted as saying,  “These complex issues cannot be resolved in two days, and he has asked the Legislature to continue to work with him over the recess to resolve the substantial differences.”

It’s true that complex issues can’t be resolved in two days, but it has now been nearly nine months since the Governor proposed his 12 point pension reform plan, surely a long enough gestation period.  Instead, it will wait until the Legislature returns in September.

Or maybe not even then.  In calling for action now, Ventura’s City Council was voicing the widely held concern that the issue will be ducked entirely to avoid antagonizing labor support for the Governor’s tax package on the November ballot.

That could be a huge mistake.  Not only does a failure to deal with pension reform jeopardize voter confidence in how State government will spend a tax increase if they approve one, it undermines long-term retirement security for the people that statewide employee unions represent.  There are two alternatives to sensible reform along the lines proposed last October by Governor Brown, neither of them pretty.  One is a much more radical attack via initiative that would strike at the very heart of public sector pensions for current, future and even past retirees.  The second is long-term insolvency for California pension systems and the agencies that fund them. The votes in San Jose and San Diego show the potential for the former.  Actuarial projections show the dismal likelihood of the latter.

As Ventura’s City Council emphasized, we all have a stake in sensible pension reform.  It may not seem to be in the immediate self-interest of government workers to take less.  But the fates of Vallejo, Stockton and San Bernardino dramatize the perils of waiting too long to put your fiscal house in order.

Ironically, one excuse offered by State Senate President Darrell Steinberg for postponing consideration of pension reform this month was to ensure successful passage of the first stage in the State’s high-speed rail system.  In signing the controversial package, Governor Brown dismissed critics as short-sighted about long-term commitments. “We are in a culture of immediate gratification — me, now, easy,” Brown said. “This is about us, long and difficult.”

He’s certainly right about our current political and social culture.  Pension reform may be long and difficult, but is clearly about us — all of us.  Time for the Legislature to recognize the urgency of this long-term challenge — and put us on track toward long-delayed, common sense solutions.

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“All-American” is one of those elastic terms that can be stretched or shrunk to fit the speaker’s mindset.  But there’s no more fitting description of this year’s Fourth of July Street Fair in Downtown Ventura.

Art, music and food drawn from across the globe in this melting pot culture we enjoy, lots of red, white and blue worn by Americans of every color.  Kids, dogs and families thronging a six-block long stretch of Main Street with 315 booths offering everything from indigenous people’s music to a chance to sign a petition against arbitrary arrests in Syria.  Locals and visitors alike celebrating the blessings of liberty as local candidates made their rounds (I saw Hannah-Beth Jackson, Bob Roper and Das Williams engaging voters.)

The powerhouse who organizes this extravaganza each year, Special Events Coordinator Michelle Godoy, arrived at 3:15 am this morning to start the set up (along with her fiancé Regal Morales, who works for Ventura Water.) You don’t entertain 40,000 guests without an enormous effort. The cool weather put no damper on attendance. The sights, smells and crowds brought Ventura alive by 10 am, beginning with the huge participation in this year’s Pushem Pullem parade for the younger set and their parents.  Lots of wagons and strollers bedecked with the Stars and Stripes.

All over America, of course, there are parades and festivities stretching into the night when traditional fireworks light up the sky.  What makes Ventura special, besides the huge crowds all day, is the sense of place that comes from having an authentic, historic Downtown.

While our Downtown dates to 1782 with the construction of the original Mission San Buenaventura, it hasn’t always been vibrant.  Like most American downtowns, it suffered as customers and businesses were drawn to newer suburban malls, shopping centers and business parks.  It’s hard to imagine an All-American community Fourth of July at the regional mall.  That hunger for authenticity and a place that felt like home is what motivated Venturans to revitalize the City’s historic heart.

While there may not have been a single turning point in Downtown’s decline, it’s hard not to mark the decision by the County to abandon its courthouse Downtown in 1978 to relocate to the expansive campus on Victoria Avenue.  It not only meant the loss of Downtown’s biggest employers, but led to the disappearance of a constellation of supporting businesses from law offices to restaurants.  While courageous, the City’s decision to save the building from the wrecking ball by purchasing it from the County for use as City Hall was not enough to turn things around.  By the recession of the early Nineties, Downtown Ventura was filled with vacant storefronts and marginal businesses barely hanging on.

That twenty years later it is the thriving revitalized heart of our community is a triumph of the American spirit of working together.  Dedicated merchants and property owners persuaded City government to commission a visionary “Downtown Specific Plan” that sketched out a strategy.  But it was the hard work and gutsy investment of entrepreneurs who gradually drew customers back to the Downtown.  Special events like the Fourth of July Street Fair, the Holiday Crafts Fair and Artwalk reintroduced Downtown to old timers and newcomers.  The construction of the movie theater and parking structure added momentum.  Then the 2006 emergence of the Downtown Ventura Organization and the 2007 adoption of an updated Downtown Specific Plan solidified the progress.  Despite the recession and the early controversy over parking meters, new businesses have continued to open and business to grow.

Those efforts continue today.  At the crossroads for the Street Fair, the Executive Director for the Downtown Ventura Organization, Kevin Clerici, was selling new “Water’s Edge” tee shirts combining the Pacific surf with our Two Trees hillside landmark to raise money for replacing the Christmas lights on the Norfolk pines next to the Mission.  That event in December is the bookend to our All-American Fourth of July, with choirs and holiday revelers gathering in front of the historic Mission to see Santa Claus and cheer the annual tree lighting.  That event too signifies the way in which our historic Downtown brings our community together as one.

Public leadership, private investment, volunteer dedication and civic pride have all contributed to the success of Downtown Ventura on display today.  We are still recovering from the hard times of the past four years.  But today is a day to count our blessings, appreciate our community and celebrate our nation’s freedoms — and the sacrifices it has taken to achieve, expand and safeguard them.  It’s an All-American day in Ventura in our All-American Downtown.

Happy birthday, Lady Liberty!

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